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The Unlikely Effort To Build a Clandestine Cell Phone Network
Lashdots writes: Electronic surveillance has raised concerns among Americans and pushed an estimated 30% of them to protect their privacy in some form. Artist Curtis Wallen has taken that effort to dramatic lengths, documenting how to create a "clandestine communications network" using pre-paid phones, Tor, Twitter, and encryption. The approach, which attempts to conceal any encryption that could raise suspicions, is "very passive" says Wallen, so "there's hardly any trace that an interaction even happened." This is not easy, of course. In fact, as he discovered while researching faulty CIA security practices, it's really, comically hard. "If the CIA can't even keep from getting betrayed by their cell phones, what chance do we have?" he says. Still, he believes his system could theoretically keep users' activities hidden, and while it's hard, it's not impossible.
So, your new identity was provided by the government which makes you stick out like a sore thumb. Even if it wasn't, anyone using a dead person's name, or appearing in multiple locations will raise a red flag. If you use the identity in multiple locations the cell phone would be associated with the identity through correlation of metadata. Burner phones would be a big red flag anyway. Encryption can be broken, it just takes a certain dollar amount of hardware that academic researchers don't have, thus the flaws are hidden from common folk. Further, the call is recorded verbatim by an orbital 'big ear' and analysed by a computer that is smarter than you. TOR does not hide shit, it makes you stick out, there is global visibility, compromised nodes and full takes that can be rewinded. Faraday cages work by impedence mismatch, modern transmitters used in espionage adjust for this and can pass right through them.
This is the era of big data...there is no hiding in a haystack. They'd have you in under 30 mins, probably instantly.
In such a world, it is better to be overt, really over, James Bond levels of being overt. Scream it from the roof tops. The tech becomes redundant, as does the people who use it.
You have used Siri or Google Now or Google Voice or Cortana, haven't you? Also, TOR and then Twitter? Let's be generous and call it "art".
Hard and impossible are the same in this case.
If you want it enough to do the hard, you've probably already attracted the kind of interest to make it impossible.
Let's just say you could create a *completely secure and anonymous communications network*. Congratulations.
How is that compatible with the construct of a free and open society based on the rule of law, which has allowances for "search" of a person's private effects?
Great, you start by starting off with something designed to be traceable? Clearly it is an art project, not a declassified CIA how-to manual.
Reminds me of the story of how people learned about DNA testing of saliva on envelopes, started taping them shut instead... and forgot that they left an easily recognizable fingerprint right there for investigators to check.
honeypot.
Like all the amazing cryptographic solutions from people whose understanding of security boils down to Tor == anonymous and OTP == tehshitz, the article conveniently glosses over the exchange of OTP key or the Twitter account name.
Whatever channel is used for agreeing upon those essentials, it will complicate claim of "hardly any trace that an interaction even happened" quite significantly.
Smartphones are so powerful now that cryptography software hasn't caught up yet. We have the computing power in phones now to do things not possible just a couple years ago. You could do things like real time steganography where the real audio message is hidden inside a fake conversation. The hardware is here, we just need an app for that.
Here in Australia (and probably in many other countries too) you have to undergo a complete identity check before you are allowed to open a prepaid phone account.
I am surprised the USA still allows you to obtain a phone number that has absolutely zero records indicating who obtained it. But I suspect companies like TracFone and AT&T that sell a lot of these prepaid phones don't want to have to deal with the ID checks and have been able to lobby the government against them.
If a voice print pair keeps showing up on different phones each time it is going to rapidly get you a lot of attention.
You bought the burner @ Rite Aid?
Now, if they want to backtrack the phone to the POP, they will have lovely, multiple, security videos of your face.
At least give some random kid $5 bucks to go in the store and buy it for you.
Sort of the opposite of buying beer when you're a minor...
Wouldn't it be easier to change the SIM card? Destroy the old SIM card instead? Destroying the cell phone seems like a waste. Just delete the incoming call log.
Mexican Drug Cartels apparently have a lot of experience with this
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=drug+cartel+cell+phone+network
But unlike legitimate cell providers (as far as we know), they have to clean up dead bodies and deal with those annoying law enforcement and military interventions.
Let us be honest: if the government wants our data, it has ways to do so, from wiretapping to keylogging. However we should really think about protecting ourselves against the megacorporations, who do not have legal powers to know everything about us, and against whom the forementioned techniques may prove useful. If we deprive them of data, they can't give it to third parties (such as the government), and they have no ways to get our data without our consent...
... I have thoroughly enjoyed the article. But to be honest: A burner phone and an untraceable credit card may very well come in handy - if you are planning to move assets overseas to avoid the IRS. I am doing IT security for a living. I don't have the need for new identities or slipping under the radar. I secure my valuable digital assets, I use entoend encrypted voice channels, file exchange, emails, chat and messaging if necessary and I have different systems for surfing and working. So - here is my advise: Before searching the "dark" net for a new identity (which might be a CIA?NSA?FBI? honeypot) - use common sense. The government is not out to get you, they are not listening to all your calls and they are not tracking everybody's movements. If you become a target of interest (e.g. by buying fake identities) you probably deserve it. Drive to the nearest truck stop, find a truck that goes north, stick you cell phone into the belly of the truck and go south. Never turn back. Never talk to friends anymore. Just build a new life in the badlands of New Mexico. You may develop a taste for jack rabbits.
What if you skipped Pastebin and any other "internet" site and only posted your GPG messages on a .onion site? Then you don't need to use a TOR exit node. For just a few users it might also be suspicious, but hard to track. But if thousands of users were doing it, there could be enough noise to hide in.